So, I finally got started with my new website. It has been a long time coming so it's great to see it live with a few visitors already stopping by to have a nose around. Thanks Dad! *waves*

It has been a crazy year leading to me starting this site. This time last year I was searching for an agent, mulling over my rather sad looking Excel spreadsheet with its dates and colour codes and depressing not-for-us rejection strikethroughs. Looking back on it now I can barely make sense of the process I was following. But it was worth it, because I received an offer of representation from one of my preferred agents, and that's the only reason I'm here writing this opening blog post. Every day I think about how thankful I am that I decided to send that follow up email to ask if Madeleine had seen my original submission.

But getting picked up by an agent was only the start of a long process. Editing with my agent followed, and then publisher submissions, editing with a publisher, copy edits, final edits, and then the actual final edits. It has been a learning curve like no other. It has also been brilliant. Most recently the art department at Headline got to work on producing a great text based cover for the proof copies. I was blown away.

And so we have now reached the point that my book is ready to make its way into the world. Theakston's Old Peculiar Crime Writing Festival is happening this weekend, and My Sister is making its debut. So if you head on over to the Sperry tent at 4 p.m. this Saturday you can pick up one of the very first editions, complete with pesky typos and a picture of me with a dodgy haircut.

At the end of such a roller coaster year it's hard to imagine the year ahead being any more satisfying than the one that's just ending. I always used to say I wanted to find an agent. I never looked much further than that. I'm sure there will be highs and lows along the way, and I'll try to post them all here to share them with you. But in the meantime, while the going is good, I'm just going to look forward to whatever happens next and try to enjoy it.